Elijah Muhammad Dies During WWII

During World War II, Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, opposed blacks registering for the draft or serving in the military and preached in favor of the Empire of Japan, saying that they were fighting against the white world order and would settle American blacks on an island somewhere (!).

He ended up being jailed for the duration of the war as a seditionist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Muhammad
http://thestudyofracialism.org/about805.html
http://www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/muhammad_e.htm

What if he had been killed for his behavior (executed as a seditionist or, more likely, lynched by someone PO'd at what he said) or died in prison of some cause or another? What effects would this have on the Nation of Islam and black politics in general?
 
The NOI probably would've stayed much smaller. Under Muhammed it tripled in size after the war, but still nothing like its growth once Malcolm X became a spokesman. Likely without EM, Malcolm never gets recruited. There would likely be no NOI temples in Boston or NY, where he was a criminal. Without him as a symbol, likely Black semi/faux-Marxists like the Panthers are seen as the main symbols of Black Power, and Fred Hampton becomes their main martyr, his image on t shirts and so on.

It'd make an interesting POD, Malcom Little as a Christian minister who originally converted while in prison. Or as a Marxist organizer, perhaps a labor union leader.
 
there were other black nationalist cults like the Moorish Science Temple - perhaps one of them would gain more prominence
 
Other fascinating unlikely ideas:

* American form of Rastafarianism takes root. Even harsher government crackdowns on marijuana result?

* Black Hebrew Israelites get started earlier. Like, fifty years earlier.
 
Louis Farrakhan wouldn't have joined the NoI either without Elijah. He might have become a popular calypso musician or violinist...if he didn't get busted for drugs. (He recalled hiding a marijuana cigarette in a hatband before going to hear Elijah speak.)
A minor character in Vonnegutt's "Mother Night" would not exist.
 

Cook

Banned
Do I understand this correctly?

This guy was in favour of the Empire of Japan and his credibility somehow survived the End of World War Two?

Perhaps he should have talked to a few Indonesians, Chinese, Filipinos, Timorese, New Guineans and Polynesians as to the enlightened racial policies of the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere!
 
Do I understand this correctly?

This guy was in favour of the Empire of Japan and his credibility somehow survived the End of World War Two?

Perhaps he should have talked to a few Indonesians, Chinese, Filipinos, Timorese, New Guineans and Polynesians as to the enlightened racial policies of the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere!

Yes, and yes. But then, he didn't bother talking to any actual Muslims about what he was preaching (or so sayeth Malcom X in his autobiography, not in so many words of course), so why would he care about what Filipinos or Indonesians really went through?
 

Cook

Banned
And a quick apology to the Thais, Burmese, Malays and Vietnamese that were the “Beneficiaries” of the Co-Prosperity Sphere too.
 

Cook

Banned
Okay...I just picked two.

You’re fine Truth, I was just making sure my list was more complete.
Tojo’s lads did such a good job of making friends and influencing people that Japanese tourists still get a frosty reception from some of the older and not so old people in S.E. Asia.

Back when I lived in a flat the old guy downstairs from me was a guest of the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. He was unluckily enough to be a raw recruit that some dumb arse thought it would be a good idea to send to Singapore to stop the crack forces of the IJA.
 
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